ARG (Art Redistribution Group) 24th June 2011 to 24th July 2011, Arcadia Missa Gallery
Unit 6 Bellenden Rd Business Centre, SE15 4RF. Thursday – Sunday 11 – 6 (sun 12 – 5)
Private View & performance by Emergent Behaviour: Friday 24th 6 – 8.30pm.
Art Redistribution Group (ARG) comprises of a natural working environment and client reception area, and state of the art, art storage facility. ARG is committed to redefining representation for your environment.
ARG is an installation by Arcadia Missa. The installation features the works of 12 artists and designers, as components to the installation as a whole, which pertains to be a contemporary art agency. The reason for this performance is to address the journey of the artwork-as-object/commodity, bringing to the fore discussions on representation (within a ‘hyperreal’ society), and looking at how context can drag the object away from intention, due to the environment it is positioned within (and explicitly incorporating the act of viewing into this context). The exhibition assesses how and on what terms a work of art can function, not only by looking at the notion of art object, but also the environment, or parameters, that works may sit within.
On entering the gallery you will enter the ARG reception area, proudly containing some choice pieces from their collection. Past the reception is ARG’s storage facility; within this space you are met with propositions and potentials, all dormant and waiting to engage in the outside environment and ‘the natural’, our everyday.
Semblances of ‘the natural’ occur in much of the work. This is due to an attempted alignment by Arcadia Missa of ideas surrounding a contemporary conversation on representation within art and design and aesthetisization as a lifestyle choice. The continued presence of representational distanciation in art and design (that which functions as an analogue of action) is increased via the context in which work is shown. And surprisingly this is evermore the case as image becomes participatory, as pictorial language becomes expressly relational.
We’re taking the most brazen utilization of representation / object abstraction, as our way into a discussion of social/political/cultural problems referenced in the work shown, and discussions on representation are at the same time brought to the fore (once again).
By looking at the context that houses representations (artworks), we can begin to unpick how context and action of interpretation (or 'viewing') can effect the conversations that underpin, or initialize, the making of art.
Each piece of work has been chosen for its specific critical response to contemporary concerns, but will act together to bring into question, the space or ‘edifice’ that houses them.
ARG features the work of Charlotte Wainwright, David Marsden, Funa Ye, Hannah Rowan, James Balmforth (work courtesy of Hannah Barry Gallery), Joe Farley, Katherine Melançon, Kyle Zeto, Lawrence Lek, Martin Lang, The No Collective & Tom Davies.